Originally aired October 26, 2001

Big high schools are the norm in Nebraska's major cities. But this environment isn't for every student - some get lost in the crowd. A few years ago the Lincoln Public Schools came up with a solution. Its formal name is the Science Focus Program - but most simply call it Zoo School, and it may be the most unique high school in the state. There's just 70 students - they take a few classes and participate in activities at other high schools, but spend most of their time at Zoo School. There's just four full-time teachers and a secretary. The only administrator is also principal of two other focus programs. "Statewide's" Mike Tobias reports that they all work together in a setting that's pretty unusual, with a commitment to creating a different kind of educational experience.

VIDEOS Watch the Perspective story here: | Click Here For Video Principal Dennis Van Horn talks about why Zoo School was started. | Click Here For Video Social sciences teacher Jim Barstow discusses the environment at Zoo School and why students choose to attend. | Click Here For Video Natural sciences teacher Sara Leroy-Toren talks about teaching at Zoo School. | Click Here For Video Student Peter Jacobson and student teacher Richard Levy demonstrate the Remote Operating Vehicle built by students in the geosciences class. | Click Here For Video TRANSCRIPT Transcript of Perspective

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: • Zoo School http://zoo.lps.org/ • Lincoln Public Schools http://www.lps.org/ • Folsom Children's Zoo http://www.lincolnzoo.org/

TRANSCRIPT - Zoo School

Reported by Statewide correspondent, Mike Tobias

"Attention please, this was now our impending emergency situation. Please remain inside buildings for your safety. Thank you."
There's a Code Red at this Lincoln High School. It's an emergency. Students and teachers stay inside for their safety. The problem? There's a bear on the loose.
[Susan Musick] "So we have to pretty much just stay where we are until we get an 'all clear'."
It's only a drill, though. The two hundred pound spectacled bears are still where they belong - inside their cage.
[De Tonack] "All schools practice tornado alerts, but we have to practice animal on the loose alert."
Such is life at Nebraska's most unusual high school - the Lincoln Public Schools Science Focus Program. Most simply call it "Zoo School."
At first the school doesn't look like much. A couple portable classrooms tucked behind some buildings. Expand the campus to cover the entire grounds of the Folsom Children's Zoo, and nothing is typical.
[Leo the Lion] "I'm Leo, the paper-eating lion."
Classrooms share space with a talking trash can. Along with emus, baboons, and some pretty aggressive goats.
[Tonack] "We have nice hallways here at the Zoo School. You get to walk down and see a peacock and walk over there and see a turtle."
Lincoln Public Schools opened Zoo School in 1997.
[Dennis Van Horn] "What we were looking for was a program that would bring some focus for students, that would provide instruction in a way that was very much different than a traditional high school. Remember that our model high schools has been around for a hundred years. We really haven't changed a whole lot in the way we deliver instruction. So we wanted to do something completely different."
That's exactly what they did. They threw out a lot of the conventions of a typical American high school. Including traditional scheduling.
[Senator Ernie Chambers] "It distorts and it diverts the system because so much time and effort has to be given on death cases."
Wednesdays are called focus days - no scheduled classes. On this Wednesday nearly the entire school traveled to the State Capitol for a death penalty discussion with state senator Ernie Chambers.
You'll find guest speakers, field trips and students working on research projects on Focus Days. The rest of the week students take more typical high school classes in hour-and-a-half blocks - more like college. Even these days change if opportunities arise.
[Beth Briney] "Our ability to be flexible is part of how this has been designed, and it's very difficult to do that in a larger school setting."
[MacKenzie Mueller] "Now often times when people are looking at harbor seals they confuse them with sea lions, but there are actually some main differences."
There's plenty of flexibility in MacKenzie Mueller's schedule. Several times a week she gives presentations with two friends - Pearl and Oblio, the zoo's two harbor seals. She also helps train them.
In between she attends classes at Zoo School and runs back and forth to her home high school - Lincoln East - for a couple classes not offered at Zoo School.
[Mueller] "I'm famous in my singing class because I smell like fish, all the time, which is not the most attractive smell. But, oh well, they learn to deal."
Mueller's always been fascinated by water animals. She's been around them here for awhile, first as a zoo volunteer. She eventually wants to become a veterinarian, working with exotic animals like these. She came to Zoo School at the start of her junior year.
[Mueller] "And so I knew I'd be able to spend more time here, and more time working with the actual zoo vet. And then also I liked the smaller environment. That's really been helpful. I like being able to manage my own time and having lots of independence."
About seventy students attend Zoo School. They're here for different reasons.
[Tonack] "They're the highly gifted, the average academic student, the struggler. But one thing common about all of them, they want to be here. They've asked to be here. And that makes it a lot easier to teach here."
[Jim Barstow] "Some came because they loved science, some came because they hated traditional schools, and some came just because they thought it would be a chance, something different."
Take Ryan Tiedeman for instance. Animals had nothing to do with his decision to come to Zoo School. He's a technology buff who says he wasn't challenged at his previous school. Tiedeman says he's labeled as highly gifted, but his grades suffered before coming to Zoo School as a junior.
[Ryan Tiedeman] "The classes are just perfect for me. Just enough organization in them to keep me headed in the right direction, and enough room so I can learn in my own ways."
Cira Meyer came to Zoo School as a junior after having problems at her other high school.
[Cira Meyer] "Like grades, like homework and grades, and I would just like skip class and everything because I just couldn't handle the same thing every day."
Her grades have since improved.
[Briney] "Yeah, you should."
Students are also attracted to the Zoo School atmosphere. Very informal, very personal.
[Megan Plith] "They treat you more like adults, they talk to you like adults, you call the teachers by their first names."
[Tiedeman] "As long as you show up for class you're all right. Basically come to school as early as you want to, the teachers are usually here by 7:30, 8, you can come read the paper, get your homework done, whatever you need to do. It's a pretty laid back environment."
It's also an environment that seems free of the cliques that plague many larger high schools.
[Mueller] "Well with a school this size, if you have cliques your cliques are like four people so it doesn't work out very well. And so everybody seems to get along really well. And I think there's a different maturity level here."
The relaxed environment doesn't mean it's easy. It's hard to slide by at Zoo School.
[Tonack] "If a student doesn't have an assignment done, we're all there right in your face. So if you're looking for a place to hide, this would not be where you'd be."
Portfolios are one way students are evaluated. Students assemble these portfolios throughout the class. They present them at the end of each semester to their teachers and parents.
[Briney] "That's a wonderful way for them to talk about what they've learned and the students to process that and to share it with their parents. But it's also a fantastic way for us to know whether we have really taught what we thought we did."
Zoo School is also a different sort of challenge for the four full-time teachers on staff. They wear different hats each day.
De Tonack is one of the original Zoo School teachers. She teaches calculus, algebra, geometry and physics, and helps with photography and computer instruction.
[Tonack] "We do all teach a lot of things, just like a small school in Nebraska. We have 6 or 7 preparations."
Beth Briney teaches English subjects that several different teachers would cover at a larger school.
[Briney] "I can't provide the expertise in all of those areas. I just can't do that. And I can accept that. But that then means that I learn a lot from my students. I try to draw from other people in the community."
[Sara LeRoy-Toren] "Here we are everyone. We're counselor, principal, all of that during the day. We go out and recruit our students."
In spite of the work, Zoo School teachers say they don't mind trading the perks of a larger school for what they've got here.
[Barstow] "As far as how we teach, the way we teach it, and the things we do, it's all up to us. There is no principal here; there are no counselors here, so it's pretty much self-autonomous. That pioneering aspect of it I think really attracted me."
[Tonack] "It's fun to be in a different sort of place. In fact, if I go back to a large high school now and I walk down those hallways and I see lots of people and lots of rooms and lots of doors - I don't want to do that anymore."
In these hallways you might also find something called a Remote Operating Vehicle, or ROV for short. It's a class project for the Geosciences class.
[Richard Levy] "The purpose was to try and provide the students some experience in how an oceanographer might explore the oceans."
Zoo School students designed and built the ROV from scratch. They also wrote a proposal and gave a presentation to come up with money for the project.
[Levy] "We had a couple of NASA scientists come and visit with us yesterday. They were really interested in seeing this because they're working on remote vehicles for exploration on Mars."
[Student] "The problem was when the cable was right here it couldn't turn around and see the objects."
Not everything worked perfectly when they tested the ROV this day. But even that provided a valuable lesson in problem solving. It's one of the many life skills that are emphasized.
[Briney] "I think it is all about helping students think more clearly. To learn to control their own thought process, their own learning process."
The University of Nebraska also sees value in Zoo School and a similar Lincoln Public School focus program, the Arts and Humanities School.
[Van Horn] "The University has given us feedback that they see Zoo School and Arts and Humanities as a predictor of freshman success because kids learn how to take responsibility for their own learning. They learn how to manage their time, they learn how to do research, we spend a lot of time working on technical writing and trying to prepare kids for that next step, whatever it is."
Test scores also show the focus programs are working. On average Zoo School students score better on standardized tests than other Lincoln Public School students.
Zoo School isn't for everyone. It doesn't offer the social and extracurricular activities available at traditional schools, although Zoo School students still participate in sports and other activities at their home high schools. But the students who try Zoo School seem to like it. Only two percent return to their home high schools.
[Van Horn] "We find that the majority of kids that go back, they miss that social connection and they need that activity. And they find out that they really like that size."
[Mueller] "I don't think I've missed out on anything really important. You miss out on some of the high school cliques and all the big high school activities and stuff like that, but I still, ya know I'm going to a soccer game today after school, I still go to the East activities a lot."
[Question] "Is this the ideal high school learning environment?"
[Briney] "For some kids. It's not for everybody."
And in most places it's not an option for anyone. In spite of the success stories, you won't find many other programs like Zoo School. That's because changing the age-old model of high school education is a little like teaching an old dog, or in this case a seal, new tricks.
[Van Horn] "We've been doing it this way for over a hundred years and there's this notion that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So it's really hard to get educators to step away from that very traditional model of doing things and look at other ways of doing things, and I think that's the major reason."
But the small group of Zoo School students and teachers are glad its creators were willing to look outside the walls of traditional education and see the opportunities on the other side of the tracks.